21 Jump Street

Once again Hollywood mines television for a story to make a film about. This time is the 1980's TV series '21 Jump Street' as the basis for a buddy comedy.

Much like many film versions of TV series, Jonah Hill and his co-writer Michael Bacall have taken the basic premise of the show for the film. Not much else is the same. That is not an entirely bad thing. In some ways the film could be seen as a satire of the show and its believability in having cops pose as teenagers in high school. There are many references made to how implausible that is. However Jonah and Michael have also cleverly satirises cop shows and films in general with many smart jokes about the cliches and conventions the genre brings up. I also liked the way they made fun of high school movies too. The problem I had though was that these clever jokes were no consistent enough to make the film as funny as it could have been. I was quite impressed with some of these very clever jokes, especially the ones about car chases.

Jonah Hill is certainly a very funny guy and he is very good here. He has also chosen an excellent partner for his comedy. Channing Tatum has not really done comedy before but he is excellent here. I think he has a gift for it and I hope he does more in the future. I am a big fan of Brie Larson from her work on the TV series 'The United States Of Tara' but I would have liked to see her do more in this film. Dave Franco is very good as the preppy rich kid. Ice Cube was hilarious in his send up of the police captain role. There are also some wonderful cameo appearances.

A decent buddy cop comedy that has many funny moments. There are not enough of them though to make this a truly great film.